Box Office - 'Night at the Museum' Takes Friday

Well, you can forget about Terminator Salvation making a ton of money. The $200 million budget tells you that Warner Bros. wants and expects it to earn more than that, and globablly it certainly will, but in the U.S., I think it'll be extremely lucky to get to $185 million. After a fairly average $13.3 million Thursday, Terminator dropped to second place behind Night at the Museum on Friday, and has only accumulated $28 million over its first two days. We had a projection of around $80 million for the first five days (Thursday through the Memorial Day weekend), and even that seems incredibly unlikely. Even if it performs very well on Saturday and Sunday, which is far from a guarantee thanks to the Thursday opening day that caters to the people who need to see it, only a mid-$70s figure would be in the cards for the five-day run. And, for the record, even that $80 million number isn't terrific for a five-day total. We also projected that Night at the Museum might topple Terminator over the four days that are generally considered the Memorial Day weekend. On Friday, it made $15.3 million, and its Saturday and Sunday numbers will be much stonger than Terminator because of the family viewing. One surprise was the Friday performance of Angels & Demons, which outgrossed Star Trek by a few hundred thousand. Trek could still hit $190 million by the end of Monday, so that doesn't worry me, but it does speak to the fact that Angels & Demons will continue to grab money from older moviegoers not interested in the sci-fi spectacles. We'll keep following the numbers to see if Terminator can find a bigger piece of the pie on Saturday and Sunday, which could reverse its fortunes.